Let the sunshine in

Anyone who has lived or spent time in Lebanon is aware of the chronic gaps in the electric grid, which have resulted in regularly scheduled power cuts of three hours a day in Beirut and as much as 12 hours a day outside the capital. The government has persistently pursued stopgap measures, such as renting power from Turkish generator barges, rather than dealing with the failings in the national grid or looking to increase the country’s use of renewables. The latest plan put forward by Lebanon’s energy ministry to address the country’s electricity woes by 2030 again relies on expensive stopgap solutions while failing to capitalize on the country’s considerable potential for renewable energy generation. At the moment, private diesel generators cover the daily power cuts, generating about a third of the country’s total electricity. This solution to the chronic power shortage comes with its own set of problems: Consumers